The program was filled with lectures, presentations, workshops and exhibitions by authors from areas ranging from architecture to design, from animation to comics. Urban sketching had a major role in the Festival, with sketch meetings happening throughout the weekend. Saturday, the 14th of October, was the busiest day, with guest sketchers coming from Belgium, France and Spain, and Portugal, of course.

Closing the day, the organizing committee held a barbecue by the poolside in the patio of the hostel where the guests were lodged. Arguably, the best thing about this festival is its potential to put together so many people from different walks of life, all connected by the lines of drawing.

The main comic book festival in Portugal happens yearly in the capital’s suburb of Amadora. Although it is constantly under the risk of being culturally overwhelmed by Lisboa, and lying just northwest of the city, Amadora prides itself of being an autonomous cultural hub in the Metropolitan Area, and the comic book festival is a long-standing venue in the town, showcasing authors, exhibitions and works both domestic and foreign for 26 years now.

While stockpiling there on comics for the coming winter, I bought Vampiros, a graphic novel about a Colonial War commando dealing with their own terrors on an undercover mission to Senegal. It was ilustrated by Juan Cavia and written by Filipe Melo and, by chance, the latter was in the venue signing books. Being the talkative type, the queue went for ages, as he gave all his fans equal attention. But it was worth it, because while Filipe sketched his elaborate autograph in the black endpaper, I got to sketch him, daydreaming about his own characters in the jungle. Great exchange!

In fact, most of the town of Elvas is such a setting. The buildings are mostly utilitarian – grain mills, star forts and simple Alentejo popular architecture. The fort overlooks on the road that leads to the train station. Tractors still drive through it on their way to the fields. Meanwhile, on the moon of Endor, two scout troopers on speeder bikes patrol the sanctuary forests for rebel commandos.

Later in the day, after Traço ’16 was over, Miguel and I went for a short visit to the only disputed territory between Portugal and Spain: the border town of Olivenza/Olivença. The town, originally under Portuguese rule, came into the hands of the Spanish crown after the Napoleonic Wars. Different interpretations by the two countries of the Congress of Vienna (1814-15) gave rise to a dispute lasting to today. It is the only territorial dispute Portugal has in the CIA Factbook.

The street signs are bilingual, and some of the street names are entirely different. So if you live in Olivenza, you may end up with two different valid addresses.

Traço ’16, Elvas drawing festival’s clever logo, designed by João Sequeira, manages to communicate both Portuguese and Spanish writing of the word traço (meaning line stroke, pronounced «trasso»), aiming for an Iberian audience. The four-day festival, that aims to become annual, successfully managed to gather sketchers, artists, illustrators, comic book authors, architects and designers, form both Portugal and Spain, in the picturesque UNESCO World Heritage site Forte da Graça.

The final talk of the day was a conversation with Borja González, a Spanish illustrator, and Paulo Monteiro, the Portuguese director of the Bedeteca de Beja (Beja comic book library). There was a long discussion about the state of the comic book market in both countries, where Borja spoke of how comics are a very successful industry in Spain right now and Paulo had but dire news about the Portuguese editorial panorama – where many talented authors and many good-willed editors exist, but the market is just too small for critical mass to be achieved (as it already happened in Spain). The solution for the small market challenge might reside in a self-effort from the authors to export their own work.

The Graça Fort is a unique military architecture structure, built in the second half of the 18th century, under the Count of Lippe, as a means to secure the highest ground in the region, just north of the town. The strategic relevance of the Graça hill, where the fort was built, became evident about a century before, during the Restoration War, when the Spanish army bombarded the town of Elvas from the vantage point, some 60 meters above the town’s castle. Its ramparts, moats and bastions are organized according to the star fort dutch model.